Justice
by Slayerbelle
Summary: Set between seasons 3 and 4. How Wesley started his search for the submerged Angel.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: With the exception of Aurora Halley, all characters in this story belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.   
  
This takes place sometime between Season 3's "Tomorrow" and Season 4's "Deep Down."  
  
Feedback sent to slayerbelle@go.com would be much appreciated.  
  
CHAPTER 1  
  
In Dreams  
  
"Wesley."  
  
At the sound of her voice, he turned but did not see her immediately.   
  
It was hard to see anything over the glowing white fog.  
  
"Cordelia?"  
  
"Here, Wes."  
  
"I can't... Oh. There you are."  
  
"No kidding. It's like I've been here forever."  
  
It was a sigh, very audible, and yet he didn't know if it was supposed to mean anything to him. Maybe the weightlessness and the overall feeling of effervescence were throwing him off.  
  
*Hell, I'm feeling effervescent.*  
  
"Where are we?" His tone was slightly annoyed, if not a little curious. The white fog that seemed to hover before him parted somewhat, and he was beginning to see more of Cordelia's face.   
  
"I don't know. And I don't know what you're doing here, either. All I know is I kept calling for you, kept asking for you, shouting your name, for what seemed like an eternity, and you didn't answer me."  
  
"I know the feeling." He was still not above the bitterness.  
  
Her eyes were softer, and by that small difference he doubted if he was talking to Cordelia at all.  
  
"Until now. You didn't answer me until now. How did you get here, Wes?"  
  
"Somehow I am surprised to find out that I am the person you'd call for help."  
  
She rolled her eyes, like she was bearing with the tantrum of a child. He had the strange feeling that he had given her that look many times before, in a previous life.   
  
"I called for you, I called for everyone. I called for my mother, if you can believe that. And then I just got it in my thick head that no one was ever going to hear me." The big eyes turned to him now, rife with curiosity. "Except you, Wes. I must be dreaming, or something. Unless you are. Or... I don't know. Did you want to tell me something?"  
  
Still not above the bitterness. A great many things he wanted to say, but to spite her he would rather not comfort her with them. Or even himself.  
  
"Where are we?" he said instead.  
  
"Wherever you brought me, Wes."  
  
He startled himself awake for the third morning in a row. Always with the same dream: Cordelia wanting to talk to him, him being evasive as hell. He knew it was psychological; he knew he was dreaming it to punish her. For abandoning him the way she had.  
  
Or he could also be punishing himself, that wasn't an unlikely scenario either.  
  
He would begin to remember the dream only in the shower, when the steam from the water that nearly scalded his body started to rise. Then he would recall everything -- her face, what she said, what he said. He hadn't actually heard from Cordelia in months. Not even when he was dying, not when he survived his ordeal.  
  
The process of pain would continue, there under the hot needles of water he let pound on himself. He would remember not only Cordelia, but others he would likely never hear from again.  
  
It would take some time (20 minutes, or three quarters of an hour) for him to realize that he'd just had enough of both methods of torture. That morning, though, he wasn't given the liberty to decide.  
  
Someone was at the door.  
  
To be continued... 


	2. Both Scarred

Disclaimer: With the exception of Aurora Halley, all characters in this story belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.   
  
This takes place sometime between Season 3's "Tomorrow" and Season 4's "Deep Down."  
  
Feedback sent to slayerbelle@go.com would be much appreciated.  
  
CHAPTER 2  
  
Both Scarred  
  
Aurora Halley had always looked upon Wesley Wyndham-Pryce with adoration. There was something about him saving her life that bound her to him, irrationally and inexplicably. As a former Watcher and since he started working for (and eventually heading) Angel Investigations, he must have saved dozens of lives. If not hundreds.  
  
*Where are they now?* Aurora wondered, her knuckles gently tapping the apartment door. *How can they just go on and not feel indebted, not feel compelled to see how goes their savior?*  
  
Too easy to forget.  
  
He opened the door, towel at his waist, hair still wet, his normally pale skin flushed. She almost took a step back, thought she was mistaken, she couldn't possibly have the right apartment.  
  
"Wesley." A soft cry was all she could manage before she gave up and threw her arms around him. She knew what had happened to him but she didn't expect to find him a changed man.  
  
He hesitated before touching her, fidgeting as someone who has been badly burned does. She would have none of it. He let some of the defenses down moments later, opting to let her in. She felt him sigh, into her hair, damp hands leaving prints on the back of her dress.  
  
"I should get some clothes on," he said.  
  
Aurora couldn't suppress the sad giggle. "Only if this makes you uncomfortable."  
  
It was exactly the kind of thing they would say to one another, but he didn't laugh now.   
  
He returned to her minutes later, completely dressed. Despite the obvious disregard for the grooming of facial hair, he seemed the same. There were things he didn't let go of even in his despair, it seemed. He still made an effort to dress well. He smelled great. There were appearances to keep, after all.  
  
"Forgive my... lack of hospitality, Aurora. I didn't expect you. I realize that I'm out of tea or anything else to offer you..."  
  
"We don't have time for tea anyway."  
  
"We don't?" he seemed slightly startled, but not suspicious. At least, not right then. "And what exactly would we have time for?"  
  
"I just want to talk."  
  
"Talk is rare, nowadays."  
  
"I've missed you a lot," she said softly. "I got absorbed in that life I thought I was having. I miss you, Cordelia... there were really bad times there."  
  
She didn't show up on his doorstep just to unload her pain on him but she couldn't help it. She had no one else.   
  
Wesley touched her eyebrow. "Your face... I just noticed now. A scar is healing. You've been attacked."  
  
"Rebecca and I."  
  
"The Kalderash?"  
  
"Yes. We got away though. It was a bad day."  
  
"We haven't seen Rebecca hovering about in a while. I'm glad she's still alive."  
  
Aurora sighed. "Just barely. She doesn't feel like she's cut out for protecting Angel. She's sloppy, she gets caught a lot. I try... I try to let her know how important her work is, but the pressure is bearing down on her. She wants to quit."  
  
At the sound of the name, Wesley cringed. Almost imperceptibly. He cleared his throat before he replied.  
  
"You can't teach people how to have a mission."  
  
"I'm beginning to learn that. Still, she has the power now. She's responsible for him. I can't let her shirk that just because she doesn't feel the need." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Aurora wanted to apologize. Arguing for the importance of keeping Angel alive was probably the last thing Wesley wanted to discuss. "I'm sorry," she said instead, talking about the other thing. The other elephant in the room. "I would have been here."  
  
"Lots of that going around."  
  
"What, regret?"  
  
"You had your own battles." Empty regret.  
  
Moments like this reminded Aurora why losing touch with these people scared her. Too much could happen in a day. An uncomfortable pause during a normal conversation foretold some sort of somber announcement. The feeling was dreadful. It also underscored how apart from their lives she was.  
  
*Focus. No distractions.*   
  
"Have you... spoken to Cordelia recently?" she asked gently.  
  
No topic seemed pain-free; it was frustrating.  
  
The way he drew in his breath -- slow, ragged, deliberate -- it was like it physically hurt. "I'm afraid I haven't been worth her time lately."  
  
"I just think you need to give her that. You know, time."  
  
"Sometimes I feel like I give too much time away already."  
  
Clearly this thing called talking was not helping him at all. Aurora checked her watch. "Let's go."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"I have to take you to the marina."   
  
To be continued 


	3. She Needs Help

Disclaimer: With the exception of Aurora Halley, all characters in this story belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.   
  
This takes place sometime between Season 3's "Tomorrow" and Season 4's "Deep Down."  
  
Feedback sent to slayerbelle@go.com would be much appreciated.  
  
CHAPTER 3  
  
She Needs Help  
  
"I remember the last time we were both here."  
  
Her eyes lit up at that. "You were amazing. You saved that little girl."  
  
"We both did. And you lost your powers that day. Here."  
  
"I see we both have selective memory."  
  
Aurora pulled over by a bluff overlooking the ocean. The sun was beginning to set, and it did remind him of the day he and Aurora were talking about. At least, the parts he could remember. When he wasn't passed out on the sand.  
  
She had become silent over there, on her side of the car. She seemed to have become rougher around the edges, having to survive in the same demon-infested world without the powers she had started with. He had lost touch with her as well, and he hadn't even realized it. It angered him then, how he let people come and go in his life.  
  
"What was it like?" Aurora asked suddenly, cutting the engine and plunging them in an even uneasier silence. "Dying."  
  
"You're a master of small talk, Aurora."  
  
She lifted a hand and pulled back her dark hair, revealing to him the jagged scars on her neck, twin slashes into skin, injured by Angel's fangs. He tore at her skin, rather than puncture it. She had bled herself to death that night.  
  
Just as he almost did.  
  
"Tell me what it was like," she said quietly, drawing him out for his own benefit.  
  
He felt like he had been lying there forever. The searing pain in his neck radiated all over his body until he was overcome by just a numbness and a dull ache, could have been his wound, could have been regret.  
  
Wesley imagined himself getting up, walking away, walking to safety, catching up to that bitch Justine, taking Connor away from her, hush Connor don't worry it's uncle Wes you're safe with uncle Wes, taking his gun to the bitch's head--  
  
Over and over again.  
  
But he would seemingly wake up, still lying there, helpless.  
  
As he recalled the event, tried to describe the shadows of it in his mind, Aurora reached across and gently touched his forearm. "I'm sorry. It took me a while to talk about-- to think about it without reliving it. I think I still do, sometimes. Relive it."  
  
"I have no one to talk to about this." In spite of himself, he laughed. "And one reason why I don't want to is because I don't like how I sound when I recount it."  
  
"You sound fine. Several counties past Broody, but you're well within your right."  
  
"What should I be seeing, Aurora?"  
  
"Ah, the point." Aurora stared out into the open ocean. Her fingertips, she realized, were cold. Numb. She was nervous. "I need your help. "  
  
"You needn't ask. Unless you know you..."  
  
Aurora nodded, apprehensively. "It's about Angel."  
  
A sharp pain emerged in his back, likely psychosomatic. Wesley knew Aurora's mission, what she was capable of doing. He also knew that she pulled strings in such a way that choices laid themselves out as destiny.  
  
She saw him tense up, so she jumped in quickly. "I know how hard this must be, and I have no right to impose this decision on you. But I have to do this, and I don't really know who else to turn to."  
  
She felt she didn't have the right. He couldn't help but feel humbled by that. If anything, Angel had violated her more and yet here she was.  
  
"Why do you need my help?" he asked, gently. Cautiously.  
  
To be continued... 


	4. The Expansive Ocean

Disclaimer: With the exception of Aurora Halley, all characters in this story belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.   
  
This takes place sometime between Season 3's "Tomorrow" and Season 4's "Deep Down."  
  
Feedback sent to slayerbelle@go.com would be much appreciated.  
  
CHAPTER 4  
  
The Expansive Ocean  
  
Before Angel followed the call of Whistler and headed to California, Aurora had never been there. Seeing the ocean from this coastline was different.   
  
The expanse of water bothered her.  
  
She turned to Wesley. "Angel's in there."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"In the water."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
Aurora shook her head. "The only thing Rebecca can tell me is that he's somewhere there. In this part of the ocean. Under water. She can't pinpoint where though."  
  
"You're saying... Angel is trapped under water. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean."  
  
"No, just this particular beach. I know how crazy it sounds. But you know our deal: if Angel had been dusted or de-souled, Rebecca would have lost her protector powers immediately. But she still has them. And she senses him here."  
  
"Since when has he... been here?"  
  
"Several days. Or weeks. I think he's been trapped, enclosed in something."  
  
There was always a big battle. Every day, even, and Wesley began to take for granted the mortality that he played with each day. Each time he cheated death he forgot how easy it was for even Angel to fall.   
  
"This is what you need me for," he said. And he wondered just how difficult it would be to extricate himself from Angel's mission. Or to find his own. Aurora was free to choose her own, and yet she was still here.   
  
She didn't know whether to play to his insecurity. Make him feel needed. Make him feel called. But she went into this knowing she wouldn't -- couldn't -- deceive him. People who are "called" believe in the nobility of what they were doing. Making Wesley believe that saving the man who almost murdered him was noble would undermine his own suffering.  
  
If there was another way, she'd take it and serve it to him. She loved him that much. But she had nothing.  
  
"Yes, that's what I need you for."   
  
They sat silent for a while. And then he stirred.  
  
"Only because you asked me, Aurora."  
  
She let out her breath, so relieved that she wanted to weep. "Thank you, Wesley."  
  
"How am I supposed to go about this?"  
  
"There's a way. And from here you'll understand why I can't do this myself, or even with Rebecca's help."  
  
Aurora started the car and drove east.  
  
To be continued... 


	5. The Mission

Disclaimer: With the exception of Aurora Halley, all characters in this story belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.   
  
This takes place sometime between Season 3's "Tomorrow" and Season 4's "Deep Down."  
  
Feedback sent to slayerbelle@go.com would be much appreciated.  
  
CHAPTER 5  
  
The Mission  
  
Bartending was a skill she picked up in Sunnydale, when she took on the mission of protecting Buffy. Without her family behind her she had no source of income, and no way to maintain a standard of living even in that literal hellhole. On the other hand, motels were cheap, and job vacancies were abundant (high mortality rate and all).  
  
"When I moved back to LA," she continued to Wesley, as the city emerged from beyond the ocean vistas, "I took a parttime job at a bar outside of the city. Mostly weekends. I had been there once or twice before, caused a little commotion while practicing magic. Anyway, people remembered me. When I began working there, I had a little bit of a reputation."  
  
"You've been studying magic on your own?" he asked, a bit guilty now that he never knew this about her.   
  
"Here and there. Apparently when the natural skill's been taken from you, it takes a while to get used to it again," she said. "But I was learning, little by little. I wanted to get it all back. Sometimes I think I'm on the verge of feeling again."  
  
"Feeling" meant back in the day, Aurora could feel despair in people. And she would fix it. The talent used to confine itself to the despair of one man (Angel) but sometimes she could channel it toward other people. Upon losing this gift Aurora felt the phantom limb sometimes, and so acutely that she thought she was either getting it back or going insane.  
  
"I would pick up on people sometimes. It's silly, but I would get the strangest things right. Woman's crying, I'd tell her that her son's expecting her call. She'd feel better. I started to get a reputation, people would go there, ask me what they have to do. What they need to do. I didn't get it all right, but they kind of knew I was still learning, so they stayed for the drinks. Sometimes I could freeze water right before their eyes. It was that underground kind of bar anyway, and they took that kind of stuff in stride.  
  
"Anyway, a few days ago this woman walks into the bar. She asks if I know how to find people in other dimensions."  
  
Wesley straightened up in the passenger seat, curious at the familiarity of the request. "Well do you?"  
  
Aurora laughed. "No, I didn't even think that was possible. I apologized to her, sorry I couldn't help, have a drink on the house. And then, I felt it. Are you familiar with my family's concept of the danuk, Wesley?"  
  
"Economy of life force. Yes, somewhat."  
  
"When you take something from someone, be it a prized possession, or his dignity, or his life, you carry with you a part of his danuk. It imposes itself on your own. On some people it's a trophy, on others it's a curse."  
  
At this, Aurora pulled over, in front of a row ofwarehouses just off the carnival by the pier. The jovial music and the lights were bleeding into this desolated place. He could see now just how tired, and apparently confused, she still was.  
  
"I felt Angel's danuk. I felt it emanating from her. I had never seen this woman, I don't know who she is, and I didn't know if I had just been around Angel that long or I was imagining it. But when Rebecca told me about her vision, that Angel was missing, I suddenly knew that she had something to do with it."  
  
"And that's why we're here?" Wesley pointed to the closest warehouse. "I assume this is where we can find her."  
  
"This is where we can find her."  
  
But Aurora still did not leave the car.   
  
"Wesley," she said. "I felt your danuk in her too."  
  
It sounded like a confession. "Justine," he whispered.  
  
"It was even stronger than Angel's. She took more from you, this woman."  
  
He felt the inevitability of his choice bearing down on him, again. "Why didn't you tell me this to begin with, Aurora?"  
  
"I wanted it to be your choice. God knows the situation would appeal to your sense of revenge."  
  
"Justice."  
  
"Semantics."  
  
He took a deep breath. It was steadier now. With purpose. "I've already said yes, Aurora."  
  
"OK then." She reached over next to him and unlatched the glove compartment. Inside were two wooden stakes. "She's being held in there by three, maybe five vamps. They were none too happy when she trashed their nest a few months back. You ready for this?"  
  
To save the life of the woman who nearly killed him? To coerce her into saving the life of the man who nearly killed him?  
  
"When this is over," he said, taking one of the stakes into his hand, "I'm finding a new mission."  
  
Aurora kissed him on the cheek and picked up her own stake. "When this is over, you won't have to."  
  
THE END. 


End file.
